Though I have writing fiction for many years, I've only very occasionally written a script. Also, every script I have written in the past has been for personal use. So, while it was useful practice, it wasn't to valuable in the context of writing for an artist, as I knew what my own vision for each page was. With Katy working on art instead of myself, I have to ensure that my script is as in-depth as possible.
To make sure I was as prepared as possible for this, I decided to do some research. I initially used some of my notes from my second year lectures with Claire Smith (including a guest lecture from another practising comic writer and editor). This included looking through my old script-writing work, without the image of what I was going for fresh in my mind. This really helped to point out where the gaps in my description was. Reading my old work, and combining it with my lecture notes, I realised that I regularly missed to mention movements the characters were making, and seemed to be thinking of each character in a way that was far too static.
This would be a huge problem when writing any script for an artist, as it leaves them uniformed of the body language that the character have, and could also lead to the characters always seemingly just standing around, which can be boring for a reader. However, this would be even more detrimental in our comic, as we have some animated panels. Movement is absolutely crucial to ensure that we utilise our ability to include animation as much as possible.
I also looked into some webpages' recommendations, but a lot were very screenplay script specific. This meant that there was a fairly large amount of information I had to disregard. Still, I found these pages (that you can access through my 'Useful Links' post) helped me really get to know the conventions of a script and how it should be laid out and communicated.
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